South Asian Music Resources at CRL

Nilanjana Bhattacharjya

Assistant Professor of Music, Colorado College

The dozens of digitized books on South Asian music in the Center
for Research Libraries’ collection offer an amazingly substantive resource. The
particularly noteworthy books within this collection fall into three broad
categories:

General surveys and broadly conceived introductions to
Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) classical traditions and
their associated instruments;

Books that have exerted a significant historical influence on
the development of South Asian music and dance historiography or that
illuminate particular moments in that process; and

Works that focus on the lesser-studied folk music and dance of
particular regions.

Studies that focus on the Hindustani and Carnatic classical
traditions dominate current scholarship in South Asian music, often at the
expense of understanding vernacular practice at more local sites, so the third
category arguably contains the most exciting contributions.

Surveys and Introductions to the Classical
Traditions

The CRL collection abounds with several surveys and introductions
to South Asian classical traditions. Some representative works in this category
include Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva’s An
Introduction to Indian Music
(1972) and Musical Instruments
(1977). The latter offers a richly illustrated introduction to the history and
classes of South Asian folk and classical instruments for nonspecialists. The
pen-and-ink drawings of less-common folk instruments complement lively descriptions
of the instruments’ use in respective contexts and traditions, and their
relationship to particular communities. Deva’s Musical Instruments of India
(1978) offers a longer introduction to South Asian organology written for
specialists. G. N. Joshi, a longtime music executive at HMV Records who
organized the commercial release of historical recordings in the All India
Radio archives, wrote Understanding Indian Classical Music
(1977), which reviews the history and theoretical development of Indian music,
including the origins and structures of raga, instruments, and the gharana
system. Joshi’s volume also offers more than 50 black-and-white photographic
plates of particular instruments, their depiction in classical sculpture, and
contemporary portraits of noted performers with their instruments.

Studies of Historical Significance

The collection features two books in English by the towering
Indian musicologist, Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936), who is credited
with writing the first modern treatise on Hindustani classical music. In A
Comparative Study of the Music Systems of the 15th, 16th, and 18th Centuries,
Bhatkhande delves into historical examples in vocal music to reveal the common
basis for the North Indian and South Indian classical traditions—which up to
this point were considered quite separate from one another. A Short
Historical Survey of the Music of Upper India offers
the text that Bhatkhande presented at the First All-India Music Conference on
March 20, 1916. He gives an overview of a few historical treatises, but argues
that one could not trace Hindustani music back to ancient and medieval texts.
Contrary to popular opinion, he maintains that the Muslim influence on
Hindustani music over the last 300 years has contributed to music’s
development, not its deterioration.

The collection also presents an extensive history of Carnatic
classical music by P. Sambamoorthy. A professor at the University of Madras,
Sambamoorthy helped establish the study of music and music departments at many
other universities throughout southern India. His six-volume South
Indian Music (1964) spans almost 2,000 pages and has
become a foundational text for the contemporary study of Carnatic music.

Ethel Rosenthal’s The Story of Indian Music and Its Instruments
(1928) shares a rare window into early studies of Indian music by western
writers—most of whom were not extensively trained in music. Intended for a
general English-speaking reader outside India, Rosenthal’s book does not
provide much substantive information, but offers an acute insight into how
English people responded to music during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Rosenthal’s book includes sections like “The Vina and Some Other Instruments”
and “The Peculiarities of Manners and Customs in Hindustan to which Allusions
are Made in their Song”. More valuably, Rosenthal’s book reproduces the complete
text of Sir William Jones’s celebrated treatise On the Musical Modes of the Hindus
(1792). Known for his study of Sanskrit and his founding of the Asiatic Society
of Bengal, Jones was the first significant European writer on Indian music—all
of which he accomplished while serving as a judge in Calcutta. The content of
Jones’s treatise reflects 18th- and 19th-century Europeans’ focus on decoding ancient
texts in South Asian music, as opposed to understanding the practice.

Regional Folk and Devotional Traditions

The collections’ many offerings in regional music traditions are
significant because they provide information largely absent in conventional
music surveys available in the United States. A general introduction to the
study of folk traditions in South Asia, Shyam Parmar’s Folk Music and Mass Media
(1982) describes the challenges of researching and documenting regionally based
projects from the perspective of a former on-air producer on All India Radio.
The book mostly focuses on how mass media culture is shaping the identity of
folk music today. Parmar notes that many excellent published studies of
regional folk traditions in South Asia exist, but they are being written in specific
regional languages, which limits their access. Furthermore, although respective
universities have initiated many helpful contributions to the study of folk
music, the overall failure to coordinate these studies of regional traditions
on a national level presents an obstacle to systematic research in these
traditions.

Of the more significant regional studies, the collection presents
the work of two of the most acclaimed scholars of folk music in East India: Asutosh
Bhattacharyya and Sukumar Rāўa. Bhattacharyya’s Chhau
Dance of Purulia (1972) is one of the first extensive studies
of the Chhau folk dance tradition, as performed in Purulia. Bhattacharyya, a
professor at Calcutta University and one of the first significant scholars of
Bengali folk culture, is also credited with having identified the Chhau dances
in Purulia, West Bengal, as a distinct tradition. The book presents an in-depth
account of the dance, associated music, and performances in one village over a
number of years. The book opens with almost 20 plates of photographs of
dancers’ costumes, movements, explanations of poses, and idols associated with
the dance. While extraordinarily detailed in its discussions, the book remains
accessible to general readers because it is so engagingly written.

Rāўa’s Music
of Eastern India (1973) explores folk, devotional,
traditional, and contemporary music from Bengal, Orissa, Assam, and Manipur. It
offers a very useful overview of different musical traditions, styles, and
instruments in these regions. The excellent chapter focusing on Nobel Laureate
Rabindranath Tagore situates Tagore’s songs within the context of more
contemporary discussions of hybrids of classical and modern traditions and
their relationships to popular music.

Madhubhai Patel’s Folksongs
of South Gujarat (1974) opens a whole new world by revealing
rural life in Southern Gujarat. Divided in 22 sections, the book translates
song texts on themes ranging from women’s fertility prayers to folkdances to
marriage, humor, separation, rain, and shepherds’ songs. Each song is situated
within the author’s own experience growing up in that region and features painstakingly
gathered anecdotes and legends that characterize the area folklore.

K. S. Kothari’s Indian
Folk Musical Instruments (1977), published by
the Sangeet Natak Akademi (National Academy of Dance, Drama, and Music for
India), was based on an exhibition of folk instruments in Delhi in 1968—the
first attempt to create a systematic record of folk instruments throughout
India. Authored by one of India’s most prominent folk music scholars, the book
presents lucid, detailed descriptions of more than 300 instruments and clear
photographs.

Some other noteworthy books within this collection include L.
Winifred Bryce’s Women’s Folk-Songs of Rajputana
(1970), whose countless translations of Rajput song lyrics reveal women’s
lives, relationships, and folklore in the region. N. A. Baloch’s Musical
Instruments of the Lower Indus Valley of Sind
(1981) features extensive descriptions of area folk instruments and beautiful
pen-and-ink sketches. Gobind Singh Mansukhani’s Indian Classical Music and Sikh Kirtan
(1978) is one of very few extended works to address the role of music in
Sikhism. It focuses on the technical aspects and experience of devotional
chanting in kirtan and satsang to explain how they form a pathway to God. Heritage
of Orissa (1977), produced by the Orissa Tourism
Development Corporation, provides an all-purpose introduction with an abundance
of attractive photographs illustrating Orissa’s geography, wildlife,
architecture, religious traditions, dance and music, fairs and festivals,
tribal life, and literature.

The collection as a whole is mostly legible,
although older publications from the 1930s and 1940s are sometimes missing
pages or provide only poorly rendered reproductions of the original
illustrations. Longer books separated into multiple files could sometimes be more
helpfully marked in terms of their respective sections, but overall, this
collection contains an abundance of riches. As noted earlier, a significant
contribution from the CRL collection consists of works on regional folk
traditions. Given the quality of research and writing as well as their
accessibility to the general reader, it is astonishing that most of these works
have had such limited circulation until now. This collection is a dramatic
contribution that expands the realm of South Asian music and dance studies for
general readers and specialized researchers alike.